Description: The LGBT community’s healthcare needs are routinely neglected and ignored by most employer-sponsored health plans and their unique healthcare concerns are anathema to the for-profit private insurance industry. This community also has a heroic history of activism around healthcare justice issues. This workshop will discuss why these issues are important for the single-payer movement and how LGBT activists can inspire and lead this movement.

Notes from Conference Participants:

90% of trans people experience discrimination in health care:

70% turned away

lack of timing/awareness - much left to the states

medical coding is discriminatory

30% put off doctor's care altogether

single payer = no more fracturing within LGBT community, one federal definition of trans care

unconscious structural barriers

HIV/AIDS movement = changing definition of a sick person -> single payer was a part of this movement, but never caught hold

marriage + employment = health care still

big finance = people's every day lives

give room for narratives for trans people

trans people liberating all of us by showing we can all express ourselves however we want